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Opinion: Everyone’s heard of the 70:20:10 model – but I’m not sure everyone gets it

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Misunderstandings over how we learn are putting organisations’ success in jeopardy, writes Barry Johnson

Perhaps the most important element in any business – whether it’s a corner shop or an international consortium – are the skills, knowledge and attitudes of individual employees, working together to deliver the company’s strategy. In essence, people make profits.

What we have known since the Stone Age is what people can do depends on what they have learned.

In the late 1970s, I worked at an industry training board quango, and while there I did a project under the supervision of Dr Silvia Downs looking at the decrease in learning that occurs if the initial learning is not practised. This was an early element of what is now referred to as the 70:20:10 model for learning and development; a commonly used formula for the optimal sources of learning by successful craftsmen, professionals and managers. I would argue that it applies to all learning but, despite the massive contribution that unskilled workers make to the effective and efficient running of every organisation, many employers continue to overlook their development.

A colleague of mine was recently working with an executive at a large British organisation, whose HR team had advised him that training courses should stop altogether. The HR team had indicated that 70:20:10 refers to time spent on training – not on the learning processes themselves, and the relationship between all three elements.

So it bears repeating how the 70:20:10 model should work in practice – and ensure that line managers and executives are aware of its value, too.

Under this model, 70 per cent of knowledge, skills and attitudes are gained from job-related experiences. The percentage has nothing to do with time – but everything to do with real-life experience. Repetition builds skills, and that is what happens on the job. This is experiential learning; self-development through day-to-day tasks, challenges, decisions and practice.

The model suggests that 20 per cent of what we know and can do comes from our interactions with others. Exposing ourselves to the ideas of others – through coaching, exploiting personal networks and other collaborative and cooperative actions – helps us, in turn, to grow. Perhaps you can name people who helped you learn?

The final 10 per cent stems from formal training courses and educational events. In the learning I did with Silvia, we measured the decrease in learning over time after a learning event and how long it took to rebuild the learning by repeating the learning event.

The essential element is that formal, off-the-job learning gives learners a flying start by building a foundation for social learning and learning from experience. It is the foundation upon which the social and experiential learning depends.

If you don’t have the foundations for the wall of learning, the wall does not get well built – and the little that is built falls.

The 70:20:10 model has nothing to do with time: it is how we learn and the most effective process for learning.

Barry Johnson is a non-executive director at Learning Partners


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